Better Than My Ex novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Rule One

"Come up," I said.

He stood at the bottom of the steps and didn't move.

"Mara."

"You're soaked. Come up before you get pneumonia."

"That isn't what I meant."

"I know what you meant."

I went up first and left the door open behind me.

I heard his shoes on the stairs, slow, one at a time.

In the flat I got a towel from the bathroom and held it out, and he took it and stood dripping on my mat.

"I'm not going to ask you to forgive me tonight," he said. "I only want to say it right."

"Then say it."

"I should have told you. Two years ago, that day, in the car. I decided you couldn't hear it from me, and it wasn't mine to decide."

"No."

"I'll never do that again. If it's ugly, if it costs me, if it makes you hate me, I'll tell you. Every time."

"Even if I ask you not to?"

"Even then."

I looked at his wet hair and his hands wrapped in my yellow towel, and at the face I had known since I was nineteen.

Bryson had never once said sorry without a speech behind it.

Levi had said it with nothing in his hands.

"I don't want you to be Bryson," I said. "I want you to be you, and I want you to tell me when you're scared."

"I'm scared now."

"Of what?"

"That I'll go home tonight and never get to do this."

"Do what?"

He didn't answer.

I stepped into him, put both hands in his wet shirt, and kissed him.

For a second he stood perfectly still.

Then his arms came around me and the towel dropped, and he kissed me back.

It was hungry and clumsy and tasted of rain.

He pulled away first, breathing hard.

"Rule one," he said against my mouth.

"What?"

"Nobody touches you until you've faced him. Your words."

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